The Australian Council of Deans of ICT (ACDICT) said ICT had been “specifically excluded” from the program, which was open to faculties of science, mathematics and education.

“As ICT is vital for the future well-being of Australia; doing it for maths and science is only addressing part of the solution,” said ACDICT Professor Leon Sterling.

“The issue is the education of STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] more generally.”

Sterling said representatives of the Federal Government’s Office for Learning and Teaching as well as the Chief Scientist’s office had acknowledged the quality of ICT teaching at schools needed to be addressed, but had not set a timeframe for doing so.

The Office for Learning and Teaching sits within the Department of Innovation and is managing the $12.4 million 'Enhancing the Training of Mathematics and Science Teachers' program.

"For this targeted program, ICT is an important enabling discipline," a departmental spokesman said. "The Office for Teaching and Learning ... would welcome grant applications that include multi-disciplinary science partners, including ICT."

Sterling told iTnews there was a general consensus among university-level educators that primary and secondary school ICT teaching was “not particularly good”.

Digital literacy – the ability to navigate digital media – was a core skill that should not be confused with ICT teaching, he said.

Meanwhile, school students were not learning mathematical concepts that formed the basis of computer science, he said.

“I’m personally a little concerned that the computational or abstract thinking that you need to be a good computer scientist is missing in the curriculum,” he said.

“Computer science is the new applied maths … we’re surrounded by machines all the time.”

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